I recently met John Sebes, co-founder of the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation. What are they doing? In his words, while the rest of the world was running around in a panic about the problems with electronic voting machines, he decided to do something about it.
Their goal is to design a voting system that will be secure, reliable, able to do a vote recount and will be open-source so people and inspect the design. It will earn the public's trust.
If you are a designer, you can help with the design.
If you are a developer, you can work on it.
If you are a believer in fair elections, you can contribute to bring this idea to fruition.
Apologies for the typos and rotten grammar in my last comment, please feel free to reach me at osdv (dot) org for more details and a more cogent reply.
Posted by: Gregory Miller | April 04, 2008 at 04:21 PM
To "TC"s comment at the top of this stack, actually its a lot closer to cigar.
YES, the machinery will be 100% transparent and available to assess. While were years from deployment details, please let me point out that the plan is to put processes in place (audit and accountability feedback loops) to ensure that each machine is, in fact, the image issued in compliance with the reference point.
One of the reasons we're working so hard on very application specific, limited function, single purpose devices is to ensure that the systems can be tightly controlled and monitored for compliance and variance from the reference image, including down to firmware, where we intend to burn appropriate amounts of tamper-proof functionality.
So yes, you WILL be able to examine a machine. How [policies are put in place to ensure that right remain to be seen by others. Part of the open source movement that uniquely INCLUDES hardware may well be agreed to independent monitoring proxies.
Sure, there is going to be an element of trust required, but if we do out work right, we should have some dynamic visual cue that can at least provide a modicum of assurance that the system is continuously being pinged for consistency (to over-simplify, think real time checksum), and then you are free to visit with the OSDV Project and completely examine the latest source of the latest image currently loaded as well as every aspect down to mask works (if you want) of the hardware.
How will that work exactly? Check back in a couple of years; we have to design and build it first. But our intent is to make darn certain that every machine is in a continuous compliance verification loop and that ANYone can examine ANY part of ANY machine at ANY time to verify their integrity, reliability, security, and trustworthiness.
Thats the WHOLE POINT of raising the millions (literally) of $ in funding we are to back the core work combined with volunteer community work to properly, from a clean slate, ground up, design the machinery that serves as the cornerstone of our democracy.
You have a RIGHT to know that you count, your vote counts, and counts accurately. OSDV ants to make sure that happens.
And by the way, the ONLY way that is likely to happen is if people like yourself step up, join our ranks and volunteer some of your brain to help us get it right.
Cheers
GAM|out
Posted by: Gregory Miller | April 04, 2008 at 04:18 PM
nice idea....
Posted by: gnoma | January 03, 2008 at 02:20 PM
That's a very good point. I don't think it undermines the system, however, any more than corrupt people could undermine paper ballot systems. With paper ballots, how do you know that your ballot got counted or the ballot box even made it to the counting center? You trust in the people who do the job and the system they follow. It's the same here. If the software of the digital voting machine is not in question, you need confidence it is actually being used and not corrupted by malware or human tampering along the way. For that, you have to have a chain of control, knowing who gets access, who did the last check of validity before it was used, who controlled it between closing time and official counting. I think it always comes back to trusting people. At least now, you are trusting people who are willing to be monitored.
Posted by: jcgrant | December 16, 2007 at 08:10 AM
Nice idea - but no cigar. When I (as a voter) am confronted by one of these machines, will I be able to examine it internally to confirm that the correct software has been loaded? No. So it's irrelevant whether the software is open source or not. I have no guarantee that the open source software was actually loaded onto the machine. This is fundamentally different to my own PC, where I can personally check that the right source code was compiled & (then) installed. I won't be able to do that on a voting machine.
Posted by: TC | December 16, 2007 at 03:58 AM